The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (26 page)

“What’re you doing?” Caoimhe asked, her thighs pressed up against the top of the down-filled comforter.

“I’m saving your skin. That’s what I’m doing.”

Caoimhe sat down on the bed then yanked her legs up so she could roll across the bed.

“You can go wherever you like,” Morrigan said, shrugging her bony shoulders. “But it’s going to catch you.”

Caoimhe felt funny. The vertigo had returned and now it was making her head spin. She was able to get to the other side of the bed, but her dismount left something to be desired. She landed on the floor, hitting her head against the nightstand.

“What did you do to me?” she slurred, glaring up at Morrigan, who’d circumvented the bed to be nearer to her.

“I only did what’s best for you,” Morrigan said, squatting down beside her, looking sad.

“The best…?” Caoimhe moaned, understanding blossoming inside her skull—but it was too late to do anything about it.

The room dipped and swirled as she tried to hold on to consciousness…and then her vision blurred and everything faded to gray.

And then black.

I felt like Alice, staring into the looking glass just before she stepped through it. I knew she was curious about what was waiting for her on the other side of the mirror, but the difference between us was that I knew the answer.

Death and the End of Death.

I pressed my hand against the wall, the cold glass pulling the heat from my flesh. I’d dropped the hammer on the ground in frustration after it’d cracked the glass, but refused to do anything more. Now I bent down and picked it up again, sliding it back into my leather tool belt.

The Alternate Frank, the one who came from a different universe, grinned at me as he stabbed his fingers into the smoothness of Marcel’s throat, choking the life out of the Ender of Death. Marcel’s eyes had begun to pop out of his head, the skin of his face and neck a fetid shade of purple. But the worst was his tongue. It was as if a giant pink slug had crawled out of his mouth and was flailing against his lips.

“Call a wormhole!” I screamed, my voice muted by the glass.

I knew Marcel couldn’t hear or see me in the condition he was in, but I wasn’t yelling at him. Instead, my eyes were
trained on Runt, who was huddled in a ball, her front paw bent at a crooked angle. She was staring intently at my lips, her pink eyes flicking back and forth as she tried to decipher what I was saying.

“Wormhole!!” I cried, pounding on the glass with my hand. “Call a wormhole!!”

Understanding flared in her eyes, her tail thumping against the concrete floor.

Thank God,
I thought.
She understood me.

Jarvis had warned us no one could wormhole in or out of the inside of Uriah Drood’s compound—so why had I asked Runt to do the impossible? Well, what very few people realized was hellhounds possessed their own special blend of magic. Which meant Runt wasn’t being monitored by anyone.

The first time she’d dragged me into a wormhole of her calling, I was an emotional wreck afterward. Stepping into Runt’s magic was like getting high on an eight-year-old girl’s pretend tea party: Your soul felt all full of unicorns, kittens, cotton candy, and pretty pink and purple twinkle lights. You had so much happiness inside of you, you thought you were gonna burst. Then, when you finally stepped out of the wormhole, all of that happiness just…evaporated—and the loss of all those beautiful things hit you with a quiet intensity reminiscent of a sucker punch to the gut.

Coming down off a hellhound magic high was seriously depressing.

Anyway, the reason I’d asked Runt to call up a wormhole was twofold: I figured Uriah Drood probably hadn’t calibrated his spell to affect hellhound magic and Runt was just close enough to Marcel she might possibly be able to save his life.

“Do it, Runt!” I screamed.

The Alternate Frank—as I now called him—seemed amused by my antics on the other side of the glass, but was much more interested in throttling Marcel, so he didn’t really pay attention to
what
exactly I was saying. The one great thing about dealing with a narcissist is they’re so caught up in the greatness of their own actions they discount what everyone else is doing.

Alternate Frank had no idea he was about to have his ass
handed to him on a plate. He was too busy luxuriating in the slow murder of the Ender of Death to be prepared for the onslaught of goodness Runt unleashed on him.

I watched from the other side of the glass as Runt sat up, struggling a little to stand on her busted leg. She looked like she was all about the plan we’d come up with, and kept thwacking her tail excitedly against the leg of the side table she was standing next to. I closed my eyes and sent all the good vibes I had inside me toward the hellhound. If she could pull this off, the three of us might actually get out of Purgatory with our lives intact.

I opened my eyes, my confidence in Runt unimpeachable, and waited for her to get the ball rolling. She lowered her head in concentration and I felt the ground begin to tremble. The trembling grew in intensity until the sandy dirt was roiling underneath my feet. I had to lean against the glass wall in order to keep my balance, leaving my sweaty palm prints all over it.

Inside, Alternate Frank lost his balance, his grip on Marcel’s throat slackening. He released Marcel, who fell forward, slamming his forehead into the wall. The taut skin opened in a spray of blood that arced across the glass, leaving a trail of bright red on the inside of the glass wall as he slid down its surface. He hit the floor, folding like a discarded marionette, his arms and legs akimbo.

Behind Marcel’s body, Alternate Frank had planted his feet on the concrete floor, trying to keep his balance.

“Good job, girl!” I yelled at Runt, giving her the thumbs-up through the window.

She wagged her tail at me as she hobbled over to Marcel’s limp body, her coat swathed in a dusky rose halo that shimmered even in the blue Purgatorial light. When she got to Marcel, she looked up at me, uncertainly. I didn’t need a diagram to know what she was thinking: She couldn’t transport me away with her and Marcel because I was on the wrong side of the glass—and she didn’t want to leave me here.

“Go!” I yelled, nodding my head. “Get Marcel away from here!”

Alternate Frank had pinpointed the source of the trouble and was now zeroing in on my puppy.

“Get out of here!” I screamed at Runt. “He’s coming!!”

I pointed to Alternate Frank, who was attempting to walk across the floor as the ground rocked and rolled beneath his feet. Runt seemed to realize the time for indecision was over. Looking back at me with a baleful expression in her eyes, she gave a casual flick of her head and called up a wormhole—actually it was more like a golden, shimmering door—then used her teeth to drag Marcel’s limp body through the doorway.

Alternate Frank leapt into the air, trying to follow Runt and Marcel on to their next destination, but he wasn’t fast enough. The doorway disappeared with a
pop
and he belly flopped onto the floor, his chin slamming into the concrete.

I leaned against the glass, exhausted, my body shaking like I’d just run a marathon. I had to force myself to stop thinking about how close Alternate Frank had come to getting his hands on Runt. If she hadn’t wormholed them out of there when she did—

No, I did not want to think about what would’ve happened.

The earthquake-like shaking had stopped immediately after Runt had disappeared inside the wormhole/doorway, so I could happily remove my hands from the glass wall I’d been using to steady myself.

Runt and Marcel were safe(ish) for now, and if I wanted to keep them that way, then I had to do something about Alternate Frank. This meant I had to either get past the stupid house spell or, if I was really smart, find a way to entice Alternate Frank outside.

I decided to try to entice him outside first and leave the spell breaking for another day.

“Hey, shithead!” I yelled, pounding on the glass wall with my fists.

Alternate Frank was still on the floor, not having moved from the spot where he’d landed after he’d missed the wormhole.

Obviously, he couldn’t hear what I was saying, but my movement caught his eye. He turned his head to look at me, a ribbon of blood on his chin where he’d split his lower lip on the concrete.

The Frank from my universe wore blond muttonchops
which I would’ve called his “trademark” look, but Alternate Frank had no facial hair—and he was thinner than my Frank. Otherwise, they were exactly the same. Blond hair and eyebrows, light brown eyes, and a sexy sneer to their lips.

From the first moment I’d met my Frank on the porch of a magical house on stilts in the middle of the marshlands of Queens, New York, I’d been smitten. It was purely a visceral, sexual attraction, and like an idiot, I’d acted on it when I should’ve stayed far away. My indiscretion had almost ruined my relationship with Daniel—actually, who was I kidding, it
had
ruined my relationship with Daniel—but somehow we’d managed to work it out and get back together.

Which was an amazing feat in its own right.

“Come out here and try to kick my ass!” I yelled, banging my fists on the glass.

Alternate Frank set one hand on the floor, using it to lift his torso and head, then he rolled over on his side and pushed himself up into a sitting position, eyes latching onto mine. I could feel the hatred rolling off of him in waves—and I was happy I could incite so much emotion in an adversary.

Crawling over to the wall, he motioned for me to kneel down closer to him. When I didn’t move, he gestured again, shaking his head. I knew there was glass between us, so he couldn’t do anything too terrible to me, and this was what finally persuaded me to kneel down closer to him.

He leaned forward and spat at me, a ball of bloody mucus and saliva splatting on the surface of the glass. The action was so aggressive I sat back away from the glass wall.

“Schmuck head,” I whispered, annoyed with myself for letting him get to me.

While I watched, he maneuvered around so his back was to the window. Using the glass to brace himself, he slid up the wall until he was back on his feet, but still leaning on the wall for support. He turned around so his face was pressed against the glass, his brown eyes leering in my direction.

My Frank may have been an asshole, but he wasn’t a creepazoid. Not like Alternate Frank, who was just balls-to-the-wall
freaky
.

“Come out here and fight like a real man, you prick,” I said, catching his eye and leering right back at him.

Alternate Frank intimidated me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him know that.

He stuck his tongue out at me and I noticed the tip was hanging from the rest of the muscle by a thread of flesh. I’d assumed the blood in his mouth had come from his split lip. I hadn’t realized he’d bitten through his tongue when he’d belly flopped onto the concrete.

He seemed to enjoy my reaction to his mutilated tongue—so much so, he smushed the thing against the glass, licking upward and smearing his bloody saliva all over the glass. I knew he was hoping to get a rise out of me, so I yawned, letting him see how bored I was by his “tongue show.”

“That’s gross,” I said. “Really disgusting. You’re nasty, you know that?”

He grinned, showing me his bloodied teeth.

“Someone should punch you in the testicles,” I added, giving him the finger. “We’ll see how big your grin is then.”

He laughed, more flecks of bloody saliva hitting the glass.

“I bet the girls stay far, far away from you back home.”

I dropped the bird, but if I could’ve jammed that middle finger up his nose, I would have.

I guess I was feeling too pleased with myself and this caused me to let my guard down. Or maybe I just believed I was safe on my side of the glass. Either way, I was startled when Alternate Frank thrust his hand through the window and grabbed my throat with his bony fingers, making it impossible for me to draw a breath.

I reached down and pulled the ball peen hammer from my tool belt and started beating the shit out of Alternate Frank’s wrist. The rest of him was still trapped behind the glass, so I couldn’t hear him screaming. But I could see his face and how much pain my hammer was inflicting on him. Watching him writhe while I battered at him with my hammer made me so damn happy I started giggling.

I’d done a lot of damage in a relatively short amount of time, my hammer busting apart the flesh around his wrist, shattering bones so they poked through the skin. I was ready to get my carnage on and do even more damage with the wire cutters in my tool belt, but Alternate Frank got wise and yanked his hand back through the glass.

“Yeah, you wanna mess with me, you better go all the way,” I hissed at him through the glass as he cradled his wounded arm to his chest.

He looked down at his arm then looked back up at me and smiled. I couldn’t figure out why he was grinning at me like that—but then he held out his arm and showed me what was so amusing: He’d already begun to heal.

I watched, in awe, as the bone shards knitted themselves back together at a whirlwind pace, the massacred flesh beginning to reconstitute itself over them as soon as they were done reforming. When it was over, his skin was flawless, with zero trace of the abuse I’d just inflicted.

“Bastard,” I murmured, wishing I boasted a healing time of 2.6 seconds.

Not knowing what else to do, I flipped Alternate Frank double birds and took off for the bushes, hoping he’d give chase—and I was not disappointed. Looking over my shoulder as I ran, I caught sight of my nemesis pushing through the spelled glass hands and face first. A second later, he was outside and in hot pursuit of yours truly.

I ran as fast as I could, jumping over the bushes where Marcel, Runt, and I had hidden earlier before heading out into the Purgatorial wasteland. The landscape was silent, no birds or insects chirping, nothing at all to mute the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears, or Alternate Frank’s footfalls as he closed the distance between us.

As I ran, I stuck my hand into my tool belt, removing the palette knife from its loop and palming it in my right hand. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do with it, but I felt better having a weapon in my hand and I’d dropped my hammer back by Uriah Drood’s house.